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Labor unions around the world faced a difficult year in 2001 due both to direct and sometimes violent repression, as well as the continuing pursuit by major multinational corporations of cheap labor in poor countries, according to the latest in a series of annual reports by the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Child labour and highly unfair labour conditions for adult stitchers in the football industry are still common practices, despite the fact that the contracts between FIFA and sporting goods companies promise the opposite. This was revealed by the Global March Against Child Labour in a presentation of three new reports on China, India and Pakistan.

The California Supreme Court delivered a stiff warning to businesses Thursday, ruling that a San Francisco man can sue Nike Inc. for false advertising for allegedly lying about working conditions at Asian factories where its athletic shoes and clothes are made.

TRAC is pleased to be able to shed some light on this subject by releasing the first audit of this kind ever to be made public: a confidential Ernst and Young assessment of the Tae Kwang Vina plant, a factory which employs 9,200 workers who produce 400,000 pairs of shoes a month exclusively for Nike in Vietnam.

A confidential Ernst & Young audit of labor and environmental conditions inside a Nike factory in Vietnam was leaked to the Transnational Resource & Action Center (TRAC) in 1997. This is the first time that an accounting firm's labor and environmental audit of any apparel company has ever been made public. This internal audit reveals that Nike workers continue to work in hazardous and unjust working conditions. TRAC's report, Smoke From A Hired Gun is an analysis and critique of the Ernst & Young audit that shows that things are even worse than Nike admits.

The Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN has raised questions about the partnerships between the United Nations and transnational corporations under the Global Compact since it was launched in the summer of 2000. Alliance members feel that the Global Compact Office has skirted the questions raised by numerous human rights and environmental abuses by companies which have signed onto the Compact.

When Val Salisbury walked down her Herefordshire lane and into a giant plastic polytunnel where dozens of Ukrainians, Lithuanians and other east Europeans were picking strawberries, the workers were surprised. She was, after all, a 69-year-old Englishwoman using a walking frame. But when she started pulling up the plants all around her and throwing them to the ground, they understood why she was there.

Leaders from 21 unions in 11 countries on five continents resolved here today to create a global union network at International Paper Co., the largest paper company in the world, ''to advance and protect the interests of IP employees worldwide.''

What exactly are maquiladoras? What do they produce and do they pay a living wage? Which companies operate on the border? These are just a few of the questions answered in our fact sheet and map.

A WTO review of Guatemala's trade policies has prompted international labor to spotlight that government's total failure to uphold freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively.

The Missouri Prisoners Labor Union (MPLU) announced today that it is initiating an international boycott against all products produced either directly or indirectly by Colgate Palmolive.

The murder of 13-year-old Irma Angelica Rosales should lead to a time of reflection about the nature of the north American economy. To a degree we seldom stop to consider, women and children increasingly provide the labor base of the North American economy, including what supposedly represents its most "advanced" sectors.

In Los Angeles, workers from six factories who sewed for the popular women's clothing line Forever 21 are calling for an official boycott. The workers are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in minimum wage and overtime pay. They worked long hours in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. And, some of the workers were fired for speaking out about the poor conditions.

Workers angered by General Motors' (GM.N) plan to shut down an assembly plant in Portugal will stage protests starting next week at GM factories in Germany and Spain, a labor source told Reuters on Friday.

In a January 29 letter the Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN documented several human rights violations and environmental abuses by companies signed on to the UN's Global Compact. Corporations that join the compact are supposed to voluntarily adhere to a series of human right and environmental principles. Instead of addressing the charges of rights violations, UN officials accused CorpWatch and the Alliance of being ''misinformed.'' In the correspondence, CorpWatch disputes the Global Compact Office's assertions point by point.

Two law firms representing former employees of Washington Mutual Inc. in California, New York and Illinois have sued the Seattle-based thrift, accusing the company of violating labor laws by failing to pay overtime and the federal minimum wage.

A United Nations convention aimed at protecting the rights of migrant workers worldwide needs to be ratified by only one more country before it becomes international law.

First hand accounts of two workers who sued a San Diego-based medical manufacturer after a workplace accident.